Is The Arab Youth’s Excitement With Entrepreneurship A Good Thing?

Rami Khoury is pleased, but slightly concerned:

The concern for now is that too much emphasis may be put on economic and social entrepreneurship as the savior movement that modernizes and rejuvenates the Arab world. High hopes similarly were pinned on other phenomena that did not deliver on their promise to the Arab people, like democracy and human rights movements, civil society development, good governance, poverty reduction or women’s rights.

I would argue that he got it backwards. Entrepreneurship’s flourishing is precisely a reaction to the failing of the collective utopias he mentioned. Entrepreneurship is all about self reliance and doing things your own way, as opposed to waiting for the government to fix itself and do things better. Entrepreneurs can succeed in the most wretched of places, as witnessed by the Lebanese who made very good lives in Africa and South America.